Duda at a Glance
- Duda is a Palo Alto, California-based website building platform that launched in 2009.
- It is designed to meet the needs of digital marketing agencies that offer web design services.
- Forbes Advisor ranked Duda among the best web builders—particularly for agencies.
- It’s not the most competitively priced website builder on the market, but it does include unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans and is highly customizable.
Pros
Duda is a high-quality website builder, making it easy to see why digital marketing agencies use it to build sites for clients. In addition to its ease of use and versatility, all plans include AWS web hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth to further enhance a site’s performance—no matter how content-heavy it is or how much site traffic it has. It is highly customizable and offers a vast range of features to help agencies more effectively collaborate with team members and clients, as well as manage clients in general, including client billing. It even has a white-label plan for agencies that want to maintain in-house branding.
Cons
Despite all of its unique features, Duda is not without its cons. To start, it’s not necessarily geared towards individuals looking to build a single business website—but agencies building sites on behalf of clients. Because of that, it includes extra features some businesses don’t need, including client management and team collaboration tools, such as the ability to add comments to the web design draft. With these added features, it’s surprisingly not more expensive than many of its top competitors.
On top of that, Duda does not have a plan that includes unlimited websites. Instead, each plan tier includes anywhere from one to four websites but gives users the option to purchase as many additional websites as they want. The price for each additional website varies by plan.
Featured Partners
1
Wix
$17 per month
Yes
Yes
2
Squarespace
$16 per month
Yes
Yes
3
Shopify
$29 per month
3 days free + First Month for $1
Drag & drop editor, AI Tools, Customize with 8k+ apps, Sell everywhere
4
Web.com
$2.99; code BUILD50 for 50% off annual purchase
Yes
Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate
How Duda Works
Duda is a user-friendly website builder that empowers users to build professional code-free websites. It has a high-quality template library where users can select a design that best suits their site’s desired functionality and aesthetics and then customize the template using its drag-and-drop editor.
While most website builders have a drag-and-drop editor, we found Duda’s to be one of the most intuitive—even if you are accustomed to using a competitor’s platform. It also includes a free stock photo library, which helps eliminate the need to download stock photos from a third-party site, such as Pexels or Shutterstock, and then upload them to your site builder. Overall, we found it straightforward and easy to use, with a very minimal learning curve.
Duda Core Features
There are two core features of Duda. First, its user-friendly site builder that requires no code (but can be custom coded), and second, its client management tools. Of course, there is a lot more to Duda than these core features, such as well-designed modern templates, the ability to easily sell anything from products to memberships online, collaborate with team members and share sites with clients.
Modern Templates
Duda has a library with dozens of pre-built templates. It’s broken out by category, such as business, professional services, restaurant and food, travel, events and more, which helps make it easy to find the right template for your website needs. Its templates are all a similar style, but are all modern and professional-looking, so there are no bad choices (the way there are with some website builders). Also, one cool feature of its template library is that it gives you the option to favorite templates as well as build and save custom templates. These could both be helpful features for businesses building websites on behalf of others, such as digital marketing and web design agencies.
Drag-and-Drop Site Editor
Duda’s website editor uses a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) drag-and-drop editor. It’s intuitive, with a minimal learning curve. To make any changes to your chosen template, simply click on the element you wish to change, such as the background image, text, menu, contact form or call-to-action (CTA) buttons. It has a number of helpful built-in tools and features, such as a free stock image library, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, blogging tools, the option to sell memberships and more.
Client Management and Billing
Duda is uniquely designed for digital marketing agencies and freelancers that offer web design services to clients. One of the ways in which it serves the needs of this audience is through a variety of key client management tools, such as a client portal and a client billing system. Another unique feature is that users can add clients as users to the website. This way, clients have the ability to access and make changes to their site. On top of that, it also offers white-label services, such as fully branded client communications, including a fully branded support channel.
Professional Tools
Since Duda is designed for those selling web design services, it comes packed with professional tools and features, such as high-performance AWS web hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth. It also has a developer mode where users can edit HTML or add custom CSS, for further customization. Additionally, it has a number of features that could help businesses serve their web design customers, such as the ability to transfer a site or change its default language.
What Sets Duda Apart
While Duda is one of the most user-friendly website builders on the market, what really stands apart from the competition are its features for agencies, such as client management and client billing and professional-quality, AWS web hosting. Furthermore, it offers white-label features to help businesses uphold their own brand image and better serve their customers with features such as fully branded customer support.
Duda Pricing and Plans
| Basic | Team | Agency | White Label | Custom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price With Annual Billing | $19 per month | $29 per month | $52 per month | $149 per month | Custom priced |
| Price With Monthly Billing | $25 per month | $39 per month | $69 per month | $199 per month | Custom priced |
| Number of Sites | One | One | Four | Four | Varies |
| Number of Team Members | One | Three | Six | Six | Unlimited |
| Storage | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Templates | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Drag-and-Drop Editor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Client Management | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Client Billing | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Widget Builder | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| White-Label Features | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Support | By email only | By email only | Priority support by email, chat and phone | Priority support by email, chat and phone | 24×7 support |
Basic
Duda’s entry-level Basic plan includes unlimited storage and bandwidth, making it good for businesses with high monthly traffic volumes or content-heavy sites. It uses AWS web hosting for enhanced site speed and performance. It also comes with full use of its professional-quality template library and drag-and-drop site editor. In general, this plan is a good choice for individual businesses seeking a user-friendly way of building a highly customizable website quickly.
Team
The Team plan includes everything from the Basic plan, but with the addition of up to three team members (as opposed to the Basic plan’s one), and client management tools, such as client billing. This makes the Team plan better suited for web design freelancers and small digital marketing agencies that sell web design and management services.
Agency
The Agency plan is a lot like the Team plan in that it’s geared towards freelance web designers and small digital marketing agencies. However, it includes up to four websites and it offers more customization capabilities, such as its widget builder. It also includes priority support via email, live chat and phone—which is a big improvement compared to the Basic and Team plans’ inclusion of support via email only. This plan is best for agencies and freelancers that work on slightly more complex web design projects and need the added design and development capabilities.
White Label
As the name implies, the White Label plan is geared towards agencies that are seeking a white-label solution. It includes everything from the Agency plan, but with the addition of white-label features, such as a branded client login screen, a white-label support portal and branded client communications. This way, clients will only see your business’s name, as opposed to Duda. This is ideal for agencies that want to uphold their own brand and eliminate any awareness of Duda as the “intermediary.”
Duda Setup
Getting started with Duda is easy. To start your free 14-day trial, simply click the button in the upper right-hand corner and input your name, email address and desired password. Duda then sends you an email where you must verify your email address. From there, you simply click the button to activate your account and you will be directed to your new user dashboard.
From the new user dashboard, users can begin building a new website by clicking on the button in the center of the page. Alternatively, it lists out its agency-related features, such as white label, client management and client billing for new users to learn more about. Upon clicking the button to create a site, users will be asked which type of site they would like to build, such as a business site, an online store or a portfolio. Users are then brought to relevant templates, where they can select the one they like best and begin customizing it within the drag-and-drop site editor.
Duda Ease of Use
Duda is one of the most user-friendly, yet comprehensive website builders available. To make changes, simply click on the element you wish to change and to add elements, select “widgets” from the left-hand vertical bar and choose the type of widget you would like to add, such as text, media, button, table, accordion, tabs, a contact form, online scheduling and more. For those who need added functionality, it has an app library as well as the ability to build your own widgets with certain plans. And speaking of which, it also has a developer mode for maximum customization.
One downside is that because it doesn’t come with a domain, you must manually connect a domain purchased from a third-party domain name registrar, such as GoDaddy or Namecheap.
Duda Security
While Duda has all of the standard built-in security measures one would expect with a SaaS platform, it does not have as many user-controlled security features as many of its competitors. For example, it does not have two-factor authentication. However, it does have user permissions where the account administrator can add other users and set their permissions based on their role, such as blogger, designer, sales or manager. This way, each user can access the backend of the site, but what they can change is limited to the parameters of their role. It also enables administrators to create custom groups with customized permissions.
Duda Customer Service and Support
Customer support is available via email for its entry-level and mid-tier plans, whereas the upper- and top-tier plans include priority support via email, phone and chat. It’s worth mentioning that while Duda claims to offer 24/7 support, this is only for its contact form—not a live support method, such as live chat or phone. That said, U.S. phone and live chat support is available weekdays from 12 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. For priority support, this leaves a lot to be desired. Not only is it not available 24 hours a day, but it’s also not available on weekends.
Duda Additional Features Worth Noting
Another noteworthy feature that is very uncommon amongst website builders that Duda has, is the ability to leave comments on the page. This is a particularly helpful feature for teams that are working together to build a website, as one team member can leave a comment for others to read and resolve. What’s more, permissions can be set, so clients can also access their site and leave comments, which is a great way to get client feedback and to make changes accordingly.
Duda Alternatives & How They Compare
| Duda | Shopify | Squarespace | Wix | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | | | | |
| Starting Price (billed annually) | $19 per month | $29 per month | $16 per month | $17 per month |
| Free Trial | 14 days | Three days | 14 days | 14 days |
| Starting Storage Limit | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Drag-and-Drop Editor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Templates | Yes, all free | Yes, however, not all are free | Yes, all free | Yes, all free |
| Native Client Management | Yes, with some plans | No | No | No |
| Native White Label | Yes, with some plans | No | No | No |
| 24/7 Support | Yes, but by web contact form only | Yes, by email and live chat | Yes, by email only | Yes, via support tickets |
| Learn More | — | |||
| Read Reviews | — |
Duda vs. Shopify
The main difference between Duda and Shopify is that these top website builders have two different target audiences and use cases. While Duda is geared towards agencies that build websites on behalf of clients, Shopify is geared towards helping online retailers increase sales and revenue with various built-in e-commerce features that help make selling easier, such as abandoned cart recovery and dropshipping integrations with the leading dropshippers.
That’s not to say that Duda can’t be used to build a sophisticated e-commerce site, but it will be a bit easier to get the functionality you’ll need for it with Shopify, as it comes with the features and tools sellers need out of the box. Meanwhile, the same is true for using Shopify as an agency—it can be done, but it’s not prepackaged for this use case, meaning that it will be a bit more laborious to build.
Duda vs. Squarespace
Squarespace has become one of the most popular website builders on the market for individuals and small businesses. Squarespace is equally as easy to use as Duda, though it is not as customizable as Duda. Granted, Squarespace is more affordable with plans starting as low as $16 per month with annual billing and unlike Duda, annual plans include a free domain name (a $12 to $20 value). However, unlike Duda, it’s not designed for agencies and freelancers offering web design services. In short, the average small business or solopreneur looking to easily build a website at an affordable price will find that Squarespace is the better choice.
Duda vs. Wix
Duda and Wix are two very similar website builders in terms of customization capabilities. Both are two of the most customizable site builders on the market; however, in terms of ease of use, Duda is a bit more intuitive. One issue with Wix’s site editor is that it’s easy to break a template design, leading to a poorly designed website in just a few clicks. Wix does not offer robust team collaboration or client management tools like Duda, making it the obvious choice for agencies, while Wix is the better choice for easily building and managing an online store, as its backend shop management system is among the best in the industry.
Who Is Duda Best For?
Duda is best for digital marketing agencies that sell web design and management services, and want a fast way of building sites without code. It’s also a good solution for businesses with teams that manage their site, as it is designed to make collaboration easy, and users can create different roles with custom permissions.
Conclusion
Duda is a high-quality website builder, but it’s not likely to be the best choice for the average small business that is looking to build a code-free website at the most affordable price. With its higher-than-average price point and features for agencies, it’s not the best fit for most businesses that are building an in-house website.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best web hosting service?
There are a number of leading web hosting services, each with very similar, yet slightly different features and inclusions. For example, IONOS is the best for startups, HostGator is the best value for content-heavy sites that need unlimited storage, Bluehost is best for building a new website and InMotion is best for reliability. Find out which is right for you with our guide to the best web hosting companies.
Is Duda better than WordPress?
Duda and WordPress are two very different content management systems. So while WordPress is generally more affordable, Duda is far more user-friendly, making it the best choice for web design beginners as well as agencies, as it has built-in tools for businesses that sell web design services.
Is Duda good for e-commerce?
Users can easily build a business website or an e-commerce website with Duda’s pre-built templates and beginner-friendly drag-and-drop site editor. Granted, it is designed for agencies, so it may not be the best choice for those looking to build a single e-commerce site. Learn more about the best e-commerce software.
How scalable are website builders?
Website builders are highly scalable, and your plan can be modified easily to meet the needs of your growing team. If you outgrow even the top-level package of your service, many vendors offer enterprise-level functionality with customized pricing. It may be worthwhile to get in touch with your system’s customer service team to learn more.